Mamfe or Mamfé is a city in and the capital of Manyu , a division of the Southwest Region in Cameroon . It is 74 km (46 mi) from the border of Nigeria , on the Manyu River . It has a population of 42,500 (2024 estimates)
115-441: It is known as a centre for traditional religion (e.g., Obasinjom and Ekpe Society ) and traditional medicine . Mamfe used to be known for bad infrastructure within the city limits, especially the roads, but in recent times the roads have been tarred and are currently in good condition. The roads leading in and out of the city have also been tarred e.g., Mamfe - Bamenda, Mamfe - Kumba, Mamfe - Ekok. The Peace Corps has maintained
230-481: A Hindu text , has a Sanskrit language shloka (hymn), which explains the importance of reverence of ecology. It states: "A pond equals ten wells , a reservoir equals ten ponds, while a son equals ten reservoirs, and a tree equals ten sons." Indian religions worship trees such as the Bodhi Tree and numerous superlative banyan trees , conserve the sacred groves of India , revere the rivers as sacred , and worship
345-423: A Jiva is either samsari (mundane, caught in cycle of rebirths) or mukta (liberated). According to this belief until the time the soul is liberated from the saṃsāra (cycle of repeated birth and death), it gets attached to one of these bodies based on the karma (actions) of the individual soul. Irrespective of which state the soul is in, it has got the same attributes and qualities. The difference between
460-605: A Total petrol station on fire. The name "Mamfe" comes from the [Bayangi language]. When Germans first arrived in the area via the Cross River, the Germans greeted a local man at the Egbekaw River site who was carrying sand from the shore and tried interrogating him about where they were. The Banyang man didn't understand and only said in his dialect, "Mamfie fah?" ("Where should I put it?"). The Germans heard this as "Mamfe" and named
575-534: A resurrection . The oldest existing branches of Christianity, the Catholic Church and the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, adhere to this view, as well as many Protestant denominations. Some Protestant Christians understand the soul as life, and believe that the dead have no conscious existence until after the resurrection (this is known as Christian conditionalism ). Some Protestant Christians believe that
690-484: A belief that natural objects other than humans have souls. This formulation was little different from that proposed by Auguste Comte as " fetishism ", but the terms now have distinct meanings. For Tylor, animism represented the earliest form of religion, being situated within an evolutionary framework of religion that has developed in stages and which will ultimately lead to humanity rejecting religion altogether in favor of scientific rationality. Thus, for Tylor, animism
805-418: A body and a soul. Paul said that the "body wars against" the soul, "For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit" (Heb 4:12 NASB), and that "I buffet my body", to keep it under control. According to Thomas Aquinas , the soul is tota in toto corpore . This means that the soul is entirely contained in every single part of
920-420: A controversy regarding the ethical claims animism may or may not make: whether animism ignores questions of ethics altogether; or, by endowing various non-human elements of nature with spirituality or personhood, it in fact promotes a complex ecological ethics . Animism is not the same as pantheism , although the two are sometimes confused. Moreover, some religions are both pantheistic and animistic. One of
1035-414: A distinct spiritual essence. Animism perceives all things— animals , plants , rocks , rivers , weather systems , human handiwork, and in some cases words —as being animated, having agency and free will. Animism is used in anthropology of religion as a term for the belief system of many Indigenous peoples in contrast to the relatively more recent development of organized religions . Animism
1150-409: A heavenly gem whose reality the most learned of men hath failed to grasp, and whose mystery no mind, however acute, can ever hope to unravel". Bahá'u'lláh stated that the soul not only continues to live after the physical death of the human body but is in fact immortal. Heaven can be seen partly as the soul's state of nearness to God, and hell as a state of remoteness from God. Each state follows as
1265-506: A life force. The concept of jiva in Jainism is similar to ātman in Hinduism; however, some Hindu traditions differentiate between the two concepts, with jiva considered as individual self, while atman as that which is universal unchanging self that is present in all living beings and everything else as the metaphysical Brahman . The latter is sometimes referred to as jiva-ātman (a soul in
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#17328848020521380-530: A living body). The Quran , the holy book of Islam , uses two words to refer to the soul: rūḥ (translated as spirit, consciousness, pneuma, or soul) and nafs (translated as self, ego, psyche, or soul), cognates of the Hebrew ruach and nefesh . The two terms are frequently used interchangeably, although rūḥ is more often used to denote the divine spirit or "the breath of life", while nafs designates one's disposition or characteristics. In Islamic philosophy,
1495-501: A means of being constantly on guard against potential threats. His suggested explanation, however, did not deal with the question of why such a belief became central to the religion. In 2000, Guthrie suggested that the "most widespread" concept of animism was that it was the "attribution of spirits to natural phenomena such as stones and trees." Many anthropologists ceased using the term animism , deeming it to be too close to early anthropological theory and religious polemic . However,
1610-483: A natural consequence of individual efforts, or the lack thereof, to develop spiritually. Bahá'u'lláh taught that individuals have no existence prior to their life here on earth and the soul's evolution is always towards God and away from the material world. The traditional doctrine in Buddhism regarding the soul, self, or ego is that it is non-existent as a separate, permanent entity. The non-existence of self ( anatman ),
1725-423: A person". Hallowell's approach to the understanding of Ojibwe personhood differed strongly from prior anthropological concepts of animism. He emphasized the need to challenge the modernist, Western perspectives of what a person is, by entering into a dialogue with different worldwide views. Hallowell's approach influenced the work of anthropologist Nurit Bird-David , who produced a scholarly article reassessing
1840-534: A precondition of religion now, in all its variants." Tylor's definition of animism was part of a growing international debate on the nature of " primitive society " by lawyers, theologians, and philologists. The debate defined the field of research of a new science: anthropology . By the end of the 19th century, an orthodoxy on "primitive society" had emerged, but few anthropologists still would accept that definition. The "19th-century armchair anthropologists" argued that "primitive society" (an evolutionary category)
1955-752: A presence in the Mamfe area since they entered the country in 1962. Since 2017, Mamfe has been a frequent battleground in the Anglophone Crisis . The city saw heavy fighting in December 2017, when the Cameroonian Army battled the Ambazonia Defence Forces for control over Mamfe and the surroundings. In May 2020, separatist fighters assassinated the newly-elected mayor, Ashu Priestly Ojong. As of January 2023, suspected separatist fighters stormed Mamfe and set
2070-522: A river valley, humidity can be over 90% and temperatures can exceed 120 F (49 °C) during the Dry Season (February - April). During the rest of the year, temperatures remain in the 80-90s (27 to 37 °C) and only fall during the Rainy Season, sometimes to 70F (21 °C). The climate can be very uncomfortable for travellers, but tourism is beginning in the area, though small. Points of interest are
2185-428: A role in judgments on the morality of abortion . Some Christians espouse a trichotomic view of humans, which characterizes humans as consisting of a body ( soma ), soul ( psyche ), and spirit ( pneuma ); however, the majority of modern Bible scholars point out how the concepts of "spirit" and of "soul" are used interchangeably in many biblical passages, and so hold to dichotomy: the view that each human comprises
2300-449: A rule, approach their environment as an external world of nature that has to be 'grasped' intellectually ... indeed the separation of mind and nature has no place in their thought and practice. Rane Willerslev extends the argument by noting that animists reject this Cartesian dualism and that the animist self identifies with the world, "feeling at once within and apart from it so that the two glide ceaselessly in and out of each other in
2415-476: A sealed circuit". The animist hunter is thus aware of himself as a human hunter, but, through mimicry, is able to assume the viewpoint, senses, and sensibilities of his prey, to be one with it. Shamanism , in this view, is an everyday attempt to influence spirits of ancestors and animals, by mirroring their behaviors, as the hunter does its prey. Cultural ecologist and philosopher David Abram proposed an ethical and ecological understanding of animism, grounded in
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#17328848020522530-432: A shadow. In some cases, it is connected to shamanistic beliefs among the various Inuit groups . Caribou Inuit groups also believed in several types of souls. Shinto distinguishes between the souls of living persons ( tamashii ) and those of dead persons ( mitama ), each of which may have different aspects or sub-souls. Sikhism considers soul ( atma ) to be part of God ( Waheguru ). Various hymns are cited from
2645-473: A spiritual soul with a corporeal soul. Ātman is a Sanskrit word that means inner self or soul. In Hindu philosophy , especially in the Vedanta school of Hinduism , ātman is the first principle , the true self of an individual beyond identification with phenomena, the essence of an individual. In order to attain liberation ( moksha ) , a human being must acquire self-knowledge ( atma jnana ), which
2760-546: A typical human concept of lifespan and time. According to Louis Ginzberg , the soul of Adam is the image of God . Every soul of human also escapes from the body every night, rises up to heaven, and fetches new life thence for the body of man. In Brahma Kumaris , human souls are believed to be incorporeal and eternal . God is considered to be the Supreme Soul, with maximum degrees of spiritual qualities, such as peace, love and purity. In Helena Blavatsky 's Theosophy ,
2875-418: A word in their languages that corresponds to "animism" (or even "religion"). The term "animism" is an anthropological construct . Largely due to such ethnolinguistic and cultural discrepancies, opinions differ on whether animism refers to an ancestral mode of experience common to indigenous peoples around the world or to a full-fledged religion in its own right. The currently accepted definition of animism
2990-438: Is a metaphysical belief which focuses on the supernatural universe : specifically, on the concept of the immaterial soul . Although each culture has its own mythologies and rituals, animism is said to describe the most common, foundational thread of indigenous peoples' "spiritual" or "supernatural" perspectives. The animistic perspective is so widely held and inherent to most indigenous peoples that they often do not even have
3105-454: Is an entity or "spiritual spark" or "light" in the human body - because of which the body can sustain life. On the departure of this entity from the body, the body becomes lifeless – no amount of manipulations to the body can make the person make any physical actions. The soul is the "driver" in the body. It is the roohu or spirit or atma , the presence of which makes the physical body alive. Many religious and philosophical traditions support
3220-438: Is called animism . In the ancient Egyptian religion , an individual was believed to be made up of various elements, some physical and some spiritual. Similar ideas are found in ancient Assyrian and Babylonian religion. The Kuttamuwa stele , a funeral stele for an 8th-century BCE royal official from Sam'al , describes Kuttamuwa requesting that his mourners commemorate his life and his afterlife with feasts "for my soul that
3335-432: Is called a tzadik . Therefore, Judaism embraces the commemoration of the day of one's death, nahala / Yahrtzeit , and not the birthday , as a festivity of remembrance, for only toward the end of life's struggles, tests and challenges could human souls be judged and credited for righteousness. Judaism places great importance on the study of the souls. Kabbalah and other mystic traditions go into greater detail into
3450-401: Is called good—happiness, wisdom, love, compassion, harmony, peace, and so on. While the spirit is eternal and incorruptible, the soul is not. The soul acts as a link between the material body and the spiritual self, and therefore shares some characteristics of both. The soul can be attracted either towards the spiritual or towards the material realm, being thus the battlefield of good and evil. It
3565-427: Is cognate with other historical Germanic terms for the same idea, including Old Frisian sēle, sēl (which could also mean "salvation", or "solemn oath"), Gothic saiwala , Old High German sēula, sēla , Old Saxon sēola , and Old Norse sāla . Present-day cognates include Dutch ziel and German Seele . In Judaism and in some Christian denominations, only human beings have immortal souls. Immortality
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3680-607: Is considered holy in several religious traditions of India. The Ficus benghalensis is the national tree of India. Vat Purnima is a Hindu festival related to the banyan tree, and is observed by married women in North India and in the Western Indian states of Maharashtra , Goa , Gujarat . For three days of the month of Jyeshtha in the Hindu calendar (which falls in May–June in
3795-464: Is created immediately by God." Protestants generally believe in the soul's existence and immortality, but fall into two major camps about what this means in terms of an afterlife . Some, following John Calvin , believe that the soul persists as consciousness after death. Others, following Martin Luther , believe that the soul dies with the body , and is unconscious ("sleeps") until the resurrection of
3910-560: Is derived from Old English sāwol, sāwel . The earliest attestations reported in the Oxford English Dictionary are from the 8th century. In King Alfred 's translation of De Consolatione Philosophiae , it is used to refer to the immaterial, spiritual, or thinking aspect of a person, as contrasted with the person's physical body; in the Vespasian Psalter 77.50, it means "life" or "animate existence". The Old English word
4025-522: Is disputed within Judaism and the concept of immortality was most likely influenced by Plato . For example, Thomas Aquinas , borrowing directly from Aristotle 's On the Soul , attributed "soul" ( anima ) to all organisms but argued that only human souls are immortal. Other religions (most notably Hinduism and Jainism ) believe that all living things from the smallest bacterium to the largest of mammals are
4140-431: Is immortal, and eternal, and capable of receiving a fulness of joy. Latter-day Saint cosmology also describes "intelligences" as the essence of consciousness or agency. These are co-eternal with God, and animate the spirits. The union of a newly-created spirit body with an eternally-existing intelligence constitutes a "spirit birth", and justifies God's title "Father of our spirits". Some Confucian traditions contrast
4255-574: Is in this stele". It is one of the earliest references to a soul as a separate entity from the body. The 800-pound (360 kg) basalt stele is 3 ft (0.91 m) tall and 2 ft (0.61 m) wide. It was uncovered in the third season of excavations by the Neubauer Expedition of the Oriental Institute in Chicago, Illinois. The Baháʼí Faith affirms that "the soul is a sign of God,
4370-484: Is inherently animistic in that it discloses a material field that is animate and self-organizing from the beginning. David Abram used contemporary cognitive and natural science , as well as the perspectival worldviews of diverse indigenous oral cultures, to propose a richly pluralist and story-based cosmology in which matter is alive. He suggested that such a relational ontology is in close accord with humanity's spontaneous perceptual experience by drawing attention to
4485-407: Is no beginning or end to the existence of soul. It is eternal in nature and changes its form until it attains liberation. In Jainism, jiva is the immortal essence or soul of a living organism, such as human, animal, fish, or plant, which survives physical death. The concept of Ajiva in Jainism means "not soul", and represents matter (including body), time, space, non-motion and motion. In Jainism,
4600-402: Is now under construction. The Mamfe Girls College was Cameroon's first all-female boarding school. There is also a teachers' training college, and several vocational schools. Popular local foods in Mamfe include eru and fu-fu , plantains with ndole, and fu-fu and ogbono soup, koki and plantains. Mamfe has a tropical monsoon climate ( Köppen climate classification Am ). As Mamfe is in
4715-464: Is of greatest value in [them], that by which [they are] most especially in God's image: 'soul' signifies the spiritual principle in [humanity]." All souls living and dead will be judged by Jesus Christ when he comes back to earth . The Catholic Church teaches that the existence of each individual soul is dependent wholly upon God, stating: "The doctrine of the faith affirms that the spiritual and immortal soul
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4830-618: Is only when the soul is attracted towards the spiritual and merges with the Self that it becomes eternal and divine. Rudolf Steiner claimed classical trichotomic stages of soul development, which interpenetrated one another in consciousness: In Surat Shabda Yoga , the soul is considered to be an exact replica and spark of the Divine. The purpose of Surat Shabd Yoga is to realize one's True Self as soul (Self-Realisation), True Essence (Spirit-Realisation) and True Divinity (God-Realisation) while living in
4945-409: Is said to be one whose souls are in harmony with each other, while an evil person is one whose souls are in conflict. The "free soul" is said to leave the body and journey to the spirit world during sleep, trance-like states , delirium , insanity , and death. The duality is also seen in the healing traditions of Austronesian shamans, where illnesses are regarded as a " soul loss " and thus to heal
5060-399: Is said to have mental illness or unconsciousness , while a dead soul may reincarnate to a disability , lower desire realms , or may even be unable to reincarnate. In theological reference to the soul, the terms "life" and "death" are viewed as emphatically more definitive than the common concepts of " biological life " and "biological death". Because the soul is said to be transcendent of
5175-498: Is sustained only by intensely animistic participation between human beings and their own written signs. For instance, as soon as someone reads letters on a page or screen, they can "see what it says"—the letters speak as much as nature spoke to pre-literate peoples. Reading can usefully be understood as an intensely concentrated form of animism, one that effectively eclipses all of the other, older, more spontaneous forms of animistic participation in which humans were once engaged. To tell
5290-422: Is the belief that humans have two or more souls, generally termed the "body soul", or "life soul", and the "free soul". The former is linked to bodily functions and awareness when awake, while the latter can freely wander during sleep or trance states. In some cases, there are a plethora of soul types with different functions. Soul dualism and multiple souls are prominent in the traditional animistic beliefs of
5405-407: Is the inverse of scientism , and hence, is deemed inherently invalid by some anthropologists. Drawing on the work of Bruno Latour , some anthropologists question modernist assumptions and theorize that all societies continue to "animate" the world around them. In contrast to Tylor's reasoning, however, this "animism" is considered to be more than just a remnant of primitive thought. More specifically,
5520-438: Is to realize that one's true self ( ātman ) is identical with the transcendent self Brahman according to Advaita Vedanta . The six orthodox schools of Hinduism believe that there is ātman (self, essence) in every being. In Hinduism and Jainism , a jiva ( Sanskrit : जीव , jīva , alternative spelling jiwa ; Hindi : जीव , jīv , alternative spelling jeev ) is a living being, or any entity imbued with
5635-443: The material existence, and is said to have (potentially) eternal life , the death of the soul is likewise said to be an eternal death . Thus, in the concept of divine judgment , God is commonly said to have options with regard to the dispensation of souls, ranging from Heaven (i.e., angels ) to hell (i.e., demons ), with various concepts in between. Typically both Heaven and hell are said to be eternal, or at least far beyond
5750-620: The Austronesian peoples , the Chinese people ( hún and pò ), the Tibetan people , most African peoples, most Native North Americans , ancient South Asian peoples, Northern Eurasian peoples, and in Ancient Egyptians (the ka and ba ). The belief in soul dualism is found throughout most Austronesian shamanistic traditions. The reconstructed Proto-Austronesian word for
5865-577: The Bhagavat Gita , Krishna said, "There is a banyan tree which has its roots upward and its branches down, and the Vedic hymns are its leaves. One who knows this tree is the knower of the Vedas." (Bg 15.1) In Buddhism's Pali canon , the banyan (Pali: nigrodha ) is referenced numerous times. Typical metaphors allude to the banyan's epiphytic nature, likening the banyan's supplanting of a host tree as comparable to
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#17328848020525980-532: The Gregorian calendar ) married women observe a fast, tie threads around a banyan tree, and pray for the well-being of their husbands. Thimmamma Marrimanu , sacred to Indian religions, has branches spread over five acres and was listed as the world's largest banyan tree in the Guinness World Records in 1989. In Hinduism, the leaf of the banyan tree is said to be the resting place for the god Krishna . In
6095-584: The Kerma culture display Animistic elements similar to other Traditional African religions . In contrast, the later polytheistic Napatan and Meroitic periods, with displays of animals in Amulets and the esteemed antiques of Lions, appear to be an Animistic culture rather than a polytheistic culture. The Kermans likely treated Jebel Barkal as a special sacred site, and passed it on to the Kushites and Egyptians who venerated
6210-508: The mesa . In North Africa , the traditional Berber religion includes the traditional polytheistic, animist, and in some rare cases, shamanistic, religions of the Berber people. In the Indian-origin religions , namely Hinduism , Buddhism , Jainism , and Sikhism , the animistic aspects of nature worship and ecological conservation are part of the core belief system. Matsya Purana ,
6325-510: The phenomenology of sensory experience. In his books The Spell of the Sensuous and Becoming Animal, Abram suggests that material things are never entirely passive in our direct perceptual experience, holding rather that perceived things actively "solicit our attention" or "call our focus", coaxing the perceiving body into an ongoing participation with those things. In the absence of intervening technologies, he suggests that sensory experience
6440-440: The "animism" of modernity is characterized by humanity's "professional subcultures", as in the ability to treat the world as a detached entity within a delimited sphere of activity. Human beings continue to create personal relationships with elements of the aforementioned objective world, such as pets, cars, or teddy bears, which are recognized as subjects. As such, these entities are "approached as communicative subjects rather than
6555-522: The "body soul" is *nawa ("breath", "life", or "vital spirit"). It is located somewhere in the abdominal cavity , often in the liver or the heart (Proto-Austronesian *qaCay ). The "free soul" is located in the head. Its names are usually derived from Proto-Austronesian *qaNiCu ("ghost", "spirit [of the dead]"), which also apply to other non-human nature spirits. The "free soul" is also referred to in names that literally mean "twin" or "double", from Proto-Austronesian *duSa ("two"). A virtuous person
6670-469: The "old animist" definition had been problematic, the term animism was nevertheless "of considerable value as a critical, academic term for a style of religious and cultural relating to the world." The new animism emerged largely from the publications of anthropologist Irving Hallowell , produced on the basis of his ethnographic research among the Ojibwe communities of Canada in the mid-20th century. For
6785-634: The "self". Instead of focusing on the essentialized, modernist self (the "individual"), persons are viewed as bundles of social relationships ("dividuals"), some of which include "superpersons" (i.e. non-humans). Stewart Guthrie expressed criticism of Bird-David's attitude towards animism, believing that it promulgated the view that "the world is in large measure whatever our local imagination makes it." This, he felt, would result in anthropology abandoning "the scientific project." Like Bird-David, Tim Ingold argues that animists do not see themselves as separate from their environment: Hunter-gatherers do not, as
6900-736: The Jewish notions of nephesh (נפש) and ruah (רוח), meaning spirit, (also in the Septuagint, e.g. Genesis 1:2 רוּחַ אֱלֹהִים = πνεῦμα θεοῦ = spiritus Dei = "the Spirit of God"). Christians generally believe in the existence and eternal, infinite nature of the soul. The "origin of the soul" has provided a vexing question in Christianity. The major theories put forward include soul creationism , traducianism , and pre-existence . According to soul creationism, God creates each individual soul directly, either at
7015-465: The Ojibwe encountered by Hallowell, personhood did not require human-likeness, but rather humans were perceived as being like other persons, who for instance included rock persons and bear persons. For the Ojibwe, these persons were each willful beings, who gained meaning and power through their interactions with others; through respectfully interacting with other persons, they themselves learned to "act as
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#17328848020527130-577: The abnormal phenomena of disease could be traced to spiritual causes. The origin of the word comes from the Latin word anima , which means life or soul. The first known usage in English appeared in 1819. Earlier anthropological perspectives , which have since been termed the old animism, were concerned with knowledge on what is alive and what factors make something alive. The old animism assumed that animists were individuals who were unable to understand
7245-527: The ancestors, who provide the basis to life. Certain indigenous religious groups such as the Australian Aboriginals are more typically totemic in their worldview, whereas others like the Inuit are more typically animistic. From his studies into child development, Jean Piaget suggested that children were born with an innate animist worldview in which they anthropomorphized inanimate objects and that it
7360-569: The animist perspective in line with Martin Buber 's " I-thou " as opposed to "I-it". In such, Harvey says, the animist takes an I-thou approach to relating to the world, whereby objects and animals are treated as a "thou", rather than as an "it". There is ongoing disagreement (and no general consensus) as to whether animism is merely a singular, broadly encompassing religious belief or a worldview in and of itself, comprising many diverse mythologies found worldwide in many diverse cultures. This also raises
7475-464: The animistic thinking evident in fetishism gave rise to a religion he named totemism . Primitive people believed, he argued, that they were descended from the same species as their totemic animal. Subsequent debate by the "armchair anthropologists" (including J. J. Bachofen , Émile Durkheim , and Sigmund Freud ) remained focused on totemism rather than animism, with few directly challenging Tylor's definition. Anthropologists "have commonly avoided
7590-462: The area so. The Egbekaw village is the native/pioneer of Mamfe town. The inhabitants speak a Bayang language as their mother tongue, called Nyang , although English is the official language spoken along with Pidgin and several other dialects, including Ejagham . The city is also noteworthy for the high proportion of Nigerians who live there. Mamfe has no university yet, but the Catholic university
7705-416: The body are the soul of man." Latter-day Saints believe that the soul is the union of a pre-existing, God-made spirit, and a temporal body, which is formed by physical conception on earth. After death, the spirit continues to live and progress in the spirit world until the resurrection , when it is reunited with the body that once housed it. This reuniting of body and spirit results in a perfect soul that
7820-445: The body is a collection of elements and the soul is the essence. Soul or psyche ( Ancient Greek : ψυχή psykhḗ , of ψύχειν psýkhein , "to breathe", cf. Latin anima ) comprises the mental abilities of a living being: reason, character, free will , feeling, consciousness , qualia , memory, perception, thinking, and so on. Depending on the philosophical system, a soul can either be mortal or immortal . The ancient Greeks used
7935-449: The corporeal, sensuous world that sustains it. Religious studies scholar Graham Harvey defined animism as the belief "that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others." He added that it is therefore "concerned with learning how to be a good person in respectful relationships with other persons." In his Handbook of Contemporary Animism (2013), Harvey identifies
8050-440: The dead . Various new religious movements deriving from Adventism including Christadelphians , Seventh-day Adventists , and Jehovah's Witnesses , similarly believe that the dead do not possess a soul separate from the body and are unconscious until the resurrection. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that the spirit and body together constitute the Soul of Man (Mankind), stating: "The spirit and
8165-467: The difference between persons and things . Critics of the old animism have accused it of preserving "colonialist and dualistic worldviews and rhetoric." The idea of animism was developed by anthropologist Sir Edward Tylor through his 1871 book Primitive Culture , in which he defined it as "the general doctrine of souls and other spiritual beings in general." According to Tylor, animism often includes "an idea of pervading life and will in nature;"
8280-548: The holy book Guru Granth Sahib (SGGS) that suggests this belief. "God is in the Soul and the Soul is in the God." The same concept is repeated at various pages of the SGGS. Example include that "The soul is divine; divine is the soul. Worship Him with love", and "The soul is the Lord, and the Lord is the soul; contemplating the Shabad, the Lord is found." The atma or soul according to Sikhism
8395-501: The human body, and therefore ubiquitous and cannot be placed in a single organ, such as heart or brain, nor it is separable from the body (except after the body's death). In the fourth book of De Trinitate , Augustine of Hippo states that the soul is all in the whole body and all in any part of it. The present Catechism of the Catholic Church states that "[The term 'soul'] refers to the innermost aspect of [persons], that which
8510-399: The idea of animism in 1999. Seven comments from other academics were provided in the journal, debating Bird-David's ideas. More recently, postmodern anthropologists are increasingly engaging with the concept of animism. Modernism is characterized by a Cartesian subject-object dualism that divides the subjective from the objective, and culture from nature. In the modernist view, animism
8625-533: The immortal rūḥ "drives" the mortal nafs, which comprises temporal desires and perceptions necessary for living. Several verses of the Quran that mention the rûh occur in chapters 17 ("The Night Journey") and 39 ("The Troops"). And they ask you, [O Muhammad], about the Rûh. Say, "The Rûh is of the affair of my Lord. And mankind has not been given of knowledge except a little. And remember your Rabb inside your-self Allah takes
8740-566: The impermanence of all things ( anitya ), and the suffering ( dukkha ) experienced by living beings due to attachment to ideas of self and permanence are central concepts in almost all Buddhist schools . The doctrine of Buddha-nature , while sometimes misinterpreted as referring to a "true self" or "soul" of some kind, actually depends upon acceptance of the concept of anatman to be properly understood. According to some Christian eschatology , when people die, their souls will be judged by God and determined to go to Heaven or to Hades awaiting
8855-448: The inert objects perceived by modernists." These approaches aim to avoid the modernist assumption that the environment consists of a physical world distinct from the world of humans, as well as the modernist conception of the person being composed dualistically of a body and a soul. Nurit Bird-David argues that: Positivistic ideas about the meaning of 'nature', 'life', and 'personhood' misdirected these previous attempts to understand
8970-405: The issue of animism and even the term itself, rather than revisit this prevalent notion in light of their new and rich ethnographies ." According to anthropologist Tim Ingold , animism shares similarities with totemism but differs in its focus on individual spirit beings which help to perpetuate life, whereas totemism more typically holds that there is a primary source, such as the land itself or
9085-455: The liberated and non-liberated souls is that the qualities and attributes are manifested completely in case of siddha (liberated soul) as they have overcome all the karmic bondages whereas in case of non-liberated souls they are partially exhibited. Souls who rise victorious over wicked emotions while still remaining within physical bodies are referred to as arihants . Concerning the Jain view of
9200-484: The limbs are active, but when one is sleeping, the soul is active and reveals "an award of joy or sorrow drawing near" in dreams. Erwin Rohde writes that an early pre- Pythagorean belief presented the soul as lifeless when it departed the body, and that it retired into Hades with no hope of returning to a body. Plato was the first thinker in antiquity to combine the various functions of the soul into one coherent conception:
9315-437: The local concepts. Classical theoreticians (it is argued) attributed their own modernist ideas of self to 'primitive peoples' while asserting that the 'primitive peoples' read their idea of self into others! She explains that animism is a "relational epistemology " rather than a failure of primitive reasoning. That is, self-identity among animists is based on their relationships with others, rather than any distinctive features of
9430-444: The main differences is that while animists believe everything to be spiritual in nature, they do not necessarily see the spiritual nature of everything in existence as being united ( monism ) the way pantheists do. As a result, animism puts more emphasis on the uniqueness of each individual soul. In pantheism, everything shares the same spiritual essence, rather than having distinct spirits or souls. For example, Giordano Bruno equated
9545-477: The moment of conception or at some later time. According to traducianism, the soul comes from the parents by natural generation. According to the preexistence theory, the soul exists before the moment of conception. There have been differing thoughts regarding whether human embryos have souls from conception, or whether there is a point between conception and birth where the fetus acquires a soul , consciousness , and / or personhood . Stances in this question play
9660-645: The mountains and their ecology. Panchavati are the sacred trees in Indic religions, which are sacred groves containing five type of trees, usually chosen from among the Vata ( Ficus benghalensis , Banyan), Ashvattha ( Ficus religiosa , Peepal), Bilva ( Aegle marmelos , Bengal Quince), Amalaki ( Phyllanthus emblica , Indian Gooseberry, Amla), Ashoka ( Saraca asoca , Ashok), Udumbara ( Ficus racemosa , Cluster Fig, Gular), Nimba ( Azadirachta indica , Neem) and Shami ( Prosopis spicigera , Indian Mesquite). The banyan
9775-471: The natural environment. Examples include water sprites , vegetation deities , and tree spirits , among others. Animism may further attribute a life force to abstract concepts such as words, true names , or metaphors in mythology . Some members of the non-tribal world also consider themselves animists, such as author Daniel Quinn , sculptor Lawson Oyekan , and many contemporary Pagans . English anthropologist Sir Edward Tylor initially wanted to describe
9890-405: The nature of the soul. Kabbalah separates the soul into five elements, corresponding to the five worlds : Kabbalah proposed a concept of reincarnation, the gilgul ( nefesh habehamit – the "animal soul"). Some Jewish traditions assert that the soul is housed in the luz bone, though traditions disagree as to whether it is the atlas at the top of the spine, or the sacrum at bottom of
10005-573: The old German bridge, the Mamfe Cross, the Mamfe River by boat, and the Mamfe Cathedral. Hotels are few, but can and do accommodate western travellers. 5°46′N 9°17′E / 5.767°N 9.283°E / 5.767; 9.283 Animism Animism (from Latin : anima meaning ' breath , spirit , life ') is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess
10120-404: The original animism of early humanity. The term ["animism"] clearly began as an expression of a nest of insulting approaches to indigenous peoples and the earliest putatively religious humans. It was and sometimes remains, a colonialist slur. — Graham Harvey , 2005. In 1869 (three years after Tylor proposed his definition of animism), Edinburgh lawyer John Ferguson McLennan , argued that
10235-419: The phenomenon as spiritualism, but he realized that it would cause confusion with the modern religion of spiritualism , which was then prevalent across Western nations. He adopted the term animism from the writings of German scientist Georg Ernst Stahl , who had developed the term animismus in 1708 as a biological theory that souls formed the vital principle , and that the normal phenomena of life and
10350-681: The physical body. Similarly, the spiritual teacher Meher Baba held that "Atman, or the soul, is in reality identical with Paramatma the Oversoul – which is one, infinite, and eternal ... [and] [t]he sole purpose of creation is for the soul to enjoy the infinite state of the Oversoul consciously." Eckankar , founded by Paul Twitchell in 1965, defines Soul as the true self; the inner, most sacred part of each person. George Gurdjieff taught that humans are not born with immortal souls but could develop them through certain efforts. Greek philosophers, such as Socrates , Plato , and Aristotle , understood that
10465-516: The senses, and to the primacy of sensuous terrain, enjoining a more respectful and ethical relation to the more-than-human community of animals, plants, soils, mountains, waters, and weather-patterns that materially sustains humanity. In contrast to a long-standing tendency in the Western social sciences, which commonly provide rational explanations of animistic experience, Abram develops an animistic account of reason itself. He holds that civilised reason
10580-434: The sick, one must "return" the "free soul" (which may have been stolen by an evil spirit or got lost in the spirit world) into the body. If the "free soul" can not be returned, the afflicted person dies or goes permanently insane. The shaman heals within the spiritual dimension by returning 'lost' parts of the human soul from wherever they have gone. The shaman also cleanses excess negative energies, which confuse or pollute
10695-436: The soul (ψυχή, psykhḗ ) must have a logical faculty, the exercise of which was the most divine of human actions. At his defense trial, Socrates even summarized his teachings as nothing other than an exhortation for his fellow Athenians to excel in matters of the psyche since all bodily goods are dependent on such excellence ( Apology 30a–b). Aristotle reasoned that a man's body and soul were his matter and form respectively:
10810-550: The soul after death. Many within these religions and philosophies see the soul as immaterial, while others consider it possibly material. According to Chinese traditions, every person has two types of soul called hun and po ( Chinese : 魂and 魄 ; pinyin : Hún and Pò ), which are respectively yang and yin . Taoism believes in Ten souls, Sanhunqipo ( Chinese : 三魂七魄 ; pinyin : Sān hún qī pò ) ( 三魂七魄 ) "three hun and seven po ". A living being that loses any of them
10925-610: The soul is "thetan", derived from the Greek word theta , symbolizing thought. Scientologists practice a form of counselling (called auditing ) which aims to address the soul to improve abilities, both worldly and spiritual. Soul dualism, also called "multiple souls" or "dualistic pluralism", is a common belief in Shamanism , and is essential in the universal and central concept of "soul flight" (also called "soul journey", " out-of-body experience ", " ecstasy ", or " astral projection "). It
11040-446: The soul is that which moves things (i.e., that which gives life, on the view that life is self-motion) by means of its thoughts, requiring that it be both a mover and a thinker. Drawing on the words of his teacher Socrates, Plato considered the psyche to be the essence of a person, being that which decides how humans behave. He considered this essence to be an incorporeal, eternal occupant of our being. Plato said that even after death,
11155-399: The soul is the field of our psychological activity (thinking, emotions, memory, desires, will, and so on) as well as of the paranormal or psychic phenomena, such as extrasensory perception or out-of-body experiences; however, the soul is not the highest, but a middle dimension of human beings. Higher than the soul is the spirit, which is considered to be the real self; the source of everything
11270-550: The soul or spirit. In Judaism , there was originally little to no concept of a soul. As seen in the Genesis , the divine breath simply animated bodies. Then Yahweh God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and so the man became a living being. Judaism relates the quality of one's soul to one's performance of the commandments ( mitzvot ) and reaching higher levels of understanding, and thus closeness to God. A person with such closeness
11385-529: The soul, Virchand Gandhi said that "the soul lives its own life, not for the purpose of the body, but the body lives for the purpose of the soul. If we believe that the soul is to be controlled by the body then soul misses its power." The Hebrew terms נפש nefesh (literally "living being"), רוח ruach (literally "wind"), נשמה neshamah (literally "breath"), חיה chayah (literally "life") and יחידה yechidah (literally "singularity") are used to describe
11500-452: The soul. In some ethnic groups, there can also be more than two souls. Like among the Tagbanwa people , where a person is said to have six souls – the "free soul" (which is regarded as the "true" soul) and five secondary souls with various functions. Several Inuit groups believe that a person has more than one type of soul. One is associated with respiration, the other can accompany the body as
11615-552: The souls and bodies of the unrighteous will be destroyed in Hell rather than suffering eternally ( annihilationism ). Believers will inherit eternal life either in Heaven, or in a Kingdom of God on earth, and enjoy eternal fellowship with God. Other Christians reject the punishment of the soul. Paul the Apostle used psychē ( ψυχή ) and pneuma ( πνεῦμα ) specifically to distinguish between
11730-403: The souls at the time of their death, and those that do not die [He takes] during their sleep. Then He keeps those for which He has decreed death and releases the others for a specified term. Indeed in that are signs for a people who give thought.. In Jainism, every living being, from plant or bacterium to human, has a soul and the concept forms the very basis of Jainism. According to Jainism, there
11845-509: The souls themselves ( Atman and jiva ) and have their physical representative (the body) in the world. The actual self is the soul, while the body is only a mechanism to experience the karma of that life. Thus, if one sees a tiger then there is a self-conscious identity residing in it (the soul), and a physical representative (the whole body of the tiger, which is observable) in the world. Many people believe that non-biological things, such as rivers and mountains, also possess souls. This belief
11960-448: The spine. The Scientology view is that a person does not have a soul, it is a soul. It is the belief of the religion that they do not have the power to force adherents' conclusions. Therefore, a person is immortal, and may be reincarnated if they wish. Scientologists view that one's future happiness and immortality, as guided by their spirituality, is influenced by how they live and act during their time on earth. Scientology's term for
12075-480: The story in this manner—to provide an animistic account of reason, rather than the other way around—is to imply that animism is the wider and more inclusive term and that oral, mimetic modes of experience still underlie, and support, all our literate and technological modes of reflection. When reflection's rootedness in such bodily, participatory modes of experience is entirely unacknowledged or unconscious, reflective reason becomes dysfunctional, unintentionally destroying
12190-402: The term " ensouled " to represent the concept of being alive, indicating that the earliest surviving Western philosophical view believed that the soul was that which gave the body life. The soul was considered the incorporeal or spiritual "breath" that animates (from the Latin anima , cf. "animal") the living organism. Francis M. Cornford quotes Pindar by saying that the soul sleeps while
12305-455: The term had also been claimed by religious groups—namely, Indigenous communities and nature worshippers —who felt that it aptly described their own beliefs, and who in some cases actively identified as "animists." It was thus readopted by various scholars, who began using the term in a different way, placing the focus on knowing how to behave toward other beings, some of whom are not human. As religious studies scholar Graham Harvey stated, while
12420-430: The view that the soul is the ethereal substance – a spirit; a non-material spark – particular to a unique living being. Such traditions often consider the soul both immortal and innately aware of its immortal nature, as well as the true basis for sentience in each living being. The concept of the soul has strong links with notions of an afterlife, but opinions may vary wildly even within a given religion as to what happens to
12535-536: The way sensual desire ( kāma ) overcomes humans. Soul In many religious and philosophical traditions, the soul is the non-material essence of a person, which includes one's identity , personality , and memories , an immaterial aspect or essence of a living being that is believed to be able to survive physical death . The concept of the soul is generally applied to humans, although it can also be applied to other living or even non-living entities, as in animism . The Modern English noun soul
12650-417: The world soul with God and espoused a pantheistic animism. In many animistic world views, the human being is often regarded as on a roughly equal footing with other animals, plants, and natural forces. Traditional African religions : most religious traditions of Sub-Saharan Africa are basically a complex form of animism with polytheistic and shamanistic elements and ancestor worship . In East Africa
12765-499: Was far more sympathetic in regard to "primitive" populations than many of his contemporaries and that Tylor expressed no belief that there was any difference between the intellectual capabilities of "savage" people and Westerners. The idea that there had once been "one universal form of primitive religion" (whether labelled animism , totemism , or shamanism ) has been dismissed as "unsophisticated" and "erroneous" by archaeologist Timothy Insoll , who stated that "it removes complexity,
12880-418: Was fundamentally seen as a mistake, a basic error from which all religions grew. He did not believe that animism was inherently illogical, but he suggested that it arose from early humans' dreams and visions and thus was a rational system. However, it was based on erroneous, unscientific observations about the nature of reality. Stringer notes that his reading of Primitive Culture led him to believe that Tylor
12995-481: Was only developed in the late 19th century (1871) by Edward Tylor . It is "one of anthropology 's earliest concepts, if not the first." Animism encompasses beliefs that all material phenomena have agency, that there exists no categorical distinction between the spiritual and physical world, and that soul , spirit, or sentience exists not only in humans but also in other animals, plants, rocks, geographic features (such as mountains and rivers), and other entities of
13110-496: Was only later that they grew out of this belief. Conversely, from her ethnographic research, Margaret Mead argued the opposite, believing that children were not born with an animist worldview but that they became acculturated to such beliefs as they were educated by their society. Stewart Guthrie saw animism—or "attribution" as he preferred it—as an evolutionary strategy to aid survival. He argued that both humans and other animal species view inanimate objects as potentially alive as
13225-628: Was ordered by kinship and divided into exogamous descent groups related by a series of marriage exchanges. Their religion was animism, the belief that natural species and objects had souls. With the development of private property, the descent groups were displaced by the emergence of the territorial state. These rituals and beliefs eventually evolved over time into the vast array of "developed" religions. According to Tylor, as society became more scientifically advanced, fewer members of that society would believe in animism. However, any remnant ideologies of souls or spirits, to Tylor, represented "survivals" of
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